Even though the invention is partly described in relation with banner advertisement, the invention is not limited to this field. Rather, the invention can help to improve and control information transmittal between different parties in various fields. E.g., members who contribute to providing their personal information on social networks also want to have control over the dissemination of that information which is required from third parties and need to be transmitted to those third parties.
Conventional banner advertisement in the Internet uses so-called inline frames (iframes) as placeholders. The publisher (also referred to as first information provider below) who publishes content (also referred to as first information below) on a web page which is visited by Internet users defines advertising space on his web page using a (first) iframe. This (first) iframe is linked to an advertiser (also referred to as second information provider below), either directly or indirectly, e.g. by a so-called ad-server (also referred to as chooser below) or other advertising agents. If it is linked directly, the iframe source is the banner ad from the advertiser. If it is linked indirectly, the first iframe source is a second iframe hosted by the ad-server leading to so-called nested iframes. The ad-server is associated with a number of advertisers and other advertisement agents and usually loads the second iframe source with content containing a banner ad of one of these advertisers in real-time. There are various methods already known in the art of online ad serving as to how the ad-server chooses one of the associated advertisers.
Thus, in both cases, the first information and the second information will, in the end, appear together for a visitor of the first information provider's web page.
The technical reason for using placeholders is to insure that the loading speed of the first information provider's web page is not negatively affected by the loading speed of the second information. The content served within the placeholder is loaded at the time that the placeholder is rendered. It also allows that placeholder to be controlled, monitored and authenticated by the content provider who is controlling the placeholder. However, the usage of placeholders leads to the second information provider not knowing anything about the first information and/or the first information provider making it impossible to adapt the second information to the first information. As a result, often the second information is not compatible with or able to be affected by the first information. This is not desirable by either information provider.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a method that allows for the second information provider to provide second information that is compatible with the first information.